August 13, 2003; 8:23 P.M. - Riding by Pac Bell Park. There was not a game going on.
August 13, 2003; 8:18 P.M. - Pac Bell Park.
Strange week. I'm still at what I like to call "100% committment", but it doesn't feel like it, as in something imminent, like something is to happen. No big thoughts or truths. No wrapping things up. No dramatique or joie de depressivre. I'm succeeding in not making a big deal about it in my mind, but it leaves me not really knowing what's going or not going to happen.
I did send an inquiry email to the monastery, but I'm not thinking much of it; it's just too weird, too far out in left field, out of the blue. I might not even get a response in time. A question I play with in my mind, though, is that if I get a favorable response, should that be a seal that I must explore that path?
If the idea didn't come to me at all, I have no problem with leaving, I'm done. But having the idea and having sent a cursory inquiry email makes me think that if an opportunity arose and I didn't at least look further into it, that might violate some personal principles.
I'm not an overtly spiritual or religious persona, but it has always been at the core of my identity in regard to my existential wanderings and cosmological wonderings. To me, those things fit together and feed questions and answers to each other.
Existence is a manifestation of the spiritual, a facet of it. And if you're considering "god", my use of the term being open to all and any interpretation, you can't do it unless you take into consideration the entire "creation", the universe, and for that you need scientific, astronomical, astrophysical input.
Entering a monastery actually isn't totally random, the idea of it has been dancing around since college, but never blossomed into feasible reality. But given the choice between dying and entering a monastery, and given that it's kinda been in my background and not totally random or arbitrary, I would have to say, yea, I think I would be required to at least look into it.
Truth to tell, I'm not expecting anything to come of this monastery thing. I think my mind came up with this just to mess with me. To give me hope? That's weird. No. Just that my mindset and energy are flowing one way now, and these thoughts create some turbulence, create eddies and swirls, interrupt the flow. Maybe just distract me enough so that when spontaneity demands, it will just happen.
